Fjodor Mikhailovich Dostojevski was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher.

Dostojevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.

His books have been translated into more than 170 languages and have sold around 15 million copies. Dostojevsky influenced a multitude of writers, from Anton Chekhov and James Joyce to Ernest Hemingway and Jean-Paul Sartre.